Chapter 28 #2
or a card she needed to write personally for some occasion. However scant the information, Lisan copied it over.
“Miss Liu?” It was Chin, holding out a visiting card. “The gatekeeper just gave me this. Your friend is here but she doesn’t
want to come in. She asks you to meet her out at the gate.”
The card was from Ju Ming. Lisan pulled on her coat and hurried out to the garden, negotiating between puddles. At the gate,
Ju Ming waved at her from behind the sheltering tarp of a rickshaw. She motioned for Lisan to climb in.
“I’m so sorry, Lisan,” she said, “but you’re the only one I trust with this.” She handed Lisan an envelope, the stamp already
on. It was addressed to Ju Ming’s father.
“What’s going on, Ju Ming?” she said. “Are you in trouble?”
“I will be very soon.” And dimples appeared for a moment on her friend’s pretty face. “I’m running away from home, Lisan.
With my lover. Oh please, don’t look so shocked. I want you to be happy for me.”
Ju Ming’s words came out in a torrent as usual. She was in love with a journalist. He had been promoted to foreign correspondent
at his newspaper and was moving to London. They couldn’t bear being apart, so Ju Ming was going with him.
“I won’t tell you how we’re traveling, only that I’m on my way now to Jessfield Station. It’s best if you don’t know so you
don’t need to lie for me, should it come to that,” Ju Ming said, “but could you mail this letter for me in two days? We’ll
be well away by then.”
The shocked expression must’ve still been on Lisan’s face because Ju Ming touched her cheek with one finger and smiled. “The
family arranged my marriage years ago, but I can’t go through with it anymore. I just can’t. Will you do this for me? Just
drop it in a mailbox the day after tomorrow. Oh, Lisan, to live in London! I’ve always wanted to travel. A life with more
adventure than going to the Race Club or learning a new dance. Can you please be happy for me?”
“What’s he like, your lover? Does he have a name?” Lisan said. “Is he Chinese? How did you meet?”
“He’s Chinese, but I won’t tell you his name,” Ju Ming said. “We met at St. John’s University. A lecture someone dragged me
to attend. I spent the entire hour staring at him. I’m so happy we decided to elope. We couldn’t go on meeting at hotels much
longer. But what’s happened here? The gatekeeper said a death in the family.”
“Mr. Stanton died,” Lisan said, “after a short illness.”
“Oh, poor Mrs. Stanton,” Ju Ming said, “so young to be widowed. You know, I thought of her the other day. I was on my way to meet . . . well, to a hotel, and there was a foreign woman standing in front of a shop, and she rather resembled your employer. But what would Mrs. Stanton be doing on a shabby street like the Rue Voisin, which is nothing but cheap hotels and cheap cafés? What will she do now, do you know?”
“She wants to travel and asked me to be her companion,” Lisan said. “She says she wants to take me with her around the world.
I think she’s just grieving and coming up with wild ideas.”
Ju Ming clasped her hands together. “Oh, but what a wonderful offer! If you do this, Lisan, you must come to London! There’s
so much more to tell you, but I must run or I won’t make the train.”
Lisan climbed off the rickshaw, watched it jounce along the road. A gloved hand waved at her, a jaunty gesture. She put Ju
Ming’s letter inside the pocket of her skirt and walked back to the house. Ju Ming, in her exuberant way, had chosen love
and adventure, with a confidence that Lisan could only envy but not emulate. There was one thing she could hold on to though.
Ju Ming would be in London. If she took up Caroline’s offer, then she might visit London. She could say, “And we could visit
my friend Ju Ming.”
An idle daydream, when Lennox Manor and its melancholy past seemed determined to wrap around her like a shroud.
Back in her room, she draped her coat over the wooden chair and pulled it closer to the fireplace, then moved aside the fireplace
screen to push another piece of wood into the firebox. She leaned her forehead against the window, felt the glass shudder
from gusts of wind. The rain mocked her, pelted droplets against the windows like insults, creating a barrier between her
and the world outside. There had never been such weather. The rain had gone on for so long it felt as though nothing ever
dried properly, dampness seeped into every shirt and pillowcase, made every piece of upholstered furniture feel clammy.
She had borrowed one of Caroline’s fashion magazines and sat up in bed to read it.
The house, now bereft of servants except for Chin, was utterly silent.
There were only the muted sounds of wind and rain outside beating on windows and roof tiles.
Inside, not even the creak of footsteps on floorboards. Her head fell back against the pillows.
And then, instead of being in her room, she is outside in the garden standing in front of the mansion. There is no rain. Snow
covers the grounds and Lennox Manor sparkles. Frost blankets its gabled roofs and shining icicles create a fringe along its
eaves. Pale winter sun reflects with blinding brilliance from white-covered lawns. Even the dimmest corners of the garden
seem filled with light, and frost on trees and shrubbery glitters as though sprinkled with diamonds. Smoke rises from chimneys
and the frosted white of the roof shines under the clear cerulean sky.
She has entered a new nightmare. She waits for Charles and Rosalie to appear. The ornamental lake gleams and water ripples
against a rowboat tied to a small dock. It should be a peaceful scene but there’s sobbing that rises and fades. A figure in
red slips between the willow trees, beckoning to her. Why won’t this apparition leave her alone? I can’t do anything for you, she screams in frustration, how am I supposed to come find you? But the wind carries her voice away.
Get out. Get out. Rosalie’s voice is strained, as though it takes everything she has to utter these words.
A sensation of danger tightens in her chest, and she wakes up.
The dream left her puzzled. Not Come find me but Get out.
Since coming back from Master Liu’s, the feeling of coercion that besieged her had changed.
At first a frantic roil of emotions, then a shift to something different.
She no longer felt compelled to stay and fulfill some unknown task.
And with this latest dream, she tentatively put a name to the sensation. It was a warning.
She only had a few days left in Shanghai anyway. She’d stay until after the funeral. Caroline would need her. Then she would
leave Lennox Manor and its ghosts behind.